GILMOUR is keen to see just ONE organisation run Scottish football and would like a pyramid system installed to give other teams a chance of league football.

Listened to one faction of football’s
powerbrokers proclaim their latest blueprint the saviour of our game, only for the other lot to quickly shoot it down in flames.

So forgive Stewart Gilmour if he sounds less than enthusiastic about the SFL’s radical plan for 16, 10, 18.

That’s
no personal attack on SFL chief executive David Longmuir or a belief that his administration’s proposal couldn’t possibly work.

It’s just the St Mirren chief feels you could propose anything and still nothing will change unless the real revolution happens first. Until the three individual groups each running their own fragments of our national sport unite then we’ll keep seeing this familiar story unfold time and again.

Gilmour said: “Change has to happen
and we’ve got to think what’s the best for the long-term future of Scottish football. Undoubtedly that is not in the system we have at the moment.

“Do I see an organisation fewer? I hope
so. I think all Scottish football fans believe we should have one league organisation. Professional football should be run by a league.

“There also has to be a pyramid system where a club can come from anywhere – as long as they fulfil all the criteria with ground safety and youth systems, etc – and work their way through.

“There’s definitely an appetite for change, no question, and I think we should be
trying to implement that change as soon as we can.

“It
needs to happen because that’s what the fans want. They are our audience and if the fans don’t turn up then we don’t have a game.”

So
everyone appears to be in agreement that change is needed but no one is
in a position of strength to make it happen. With the SPL board due to table two ideas of their own to their 12 member clubs at a meeting on December 3, it’s a debate that seems sure to rumble on with a familiar lack of decisive action.

The SFA were supposed to have been the ones providing all the answers to this conundrum. The neutral voice of reason in the middle of two league bodies fighting to preserve their own existence.

But two years since commissioning Henry McLeish to conduct a review of our game, the SFA have yet to deliver the recommendations returned.

Yet
Longmuir’s proposal that will be put to the SFL’s 30 member clubs at Hampden today does incorporate one idea mooted by McLeish.

The introduction of colts teams for Celtic and Rangers in a new-look 18-club bottom tier would give their youth academy kids a better chance of progressing into the first team.

And while Gilmour’s strong opposition to that notion is likely to be echoed by other clubs, Stewart Regan welcomed the idea.

The SFA chief executive said: “He (McLeish) felt having Colt teams would help young players get first-team opportunity. That has merits. It needs further discussion with clubs to understand the implications.

“There’s a lot of detail that would require to be discussed, such as promotion/relegation, financial distribution, home and away matches and so on and so forth.

“We need to go through the consultation. But in merit, we back the McLeish report. It was in there at the time and it was also in the SPL strategic
plan in the first draft tabled 18 months to two years ago.”

The sad fact is we could still be going over the same consultations and debates in another two years.

Gilmour added: “If there is a colts league, fine. But I don’t think clubs should have their colt teams within the senior league. That’s possibly looking to have your cake and eat it.”

But who wants to eat a cake that has gone stale? It will take compromise, a willingness to set aside personal interests and a desire to share the wealth in order to create more.

So for those reasons above all else, don’t expect change any time soon.